NIGERIAN OIL AND GAS SECTOR ROGUES !!! NNPC traders have blending plants in Malta to frustrate Nigeria, says Dangote

NNPC traders have blending plants in Malta to frustrate Nigeria, says Dangote

Insists imported fuel damage vehicles in Nigeria

By Samuel Ogunsona, Ologeh Joseph Chibu and Usman Badejo

In the past few months, Nigerians have been treated with a maggot dance by their elite showcasing the rot of the Nigerian exploitative and repressive, self-serving capitalism.

From top Government officials taking bribe from international loans, including the World Bank, to the efforts of fuel import cartels to frustrate local production.

A new dimention has been added.

The Chairman of the Dangote group, Aliko Dangote, has said some officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have opened a blending plant in Malta where they refine exported Nigerian products and bring in poor quality of fuel with fake certificates.

With this,the hope of reviving Nigeria’s four refineries is doomed unless there is a revolutionary intervention to deal with a system that stinks.

The billionaire, who some accused is a beneficiary of Nigerian scam, revealed the rot during his speech with the House of Representatives members on Monday that, with the self-interests of some NNPC officials, prospects of home-grown refinery and production companies of crude is dim.

Dangote said the locations of the blending plants are known to many stating that most of the vehicles used in Nigeria are damaged due to the bad products of fuel imported from other parts of the country.

Some officials in NNPC have been fighting Dangote over the importation of fuel which his $20b refinery was set up to eliminate.

A top NNPC official who now lives in the United States told Irohinoodua in a phone chat that refineries in Nigeria will not be allowed to work as long as “profiteers and crooks’ run the affairs of the NNPC with their collaborators and enhancers in the political sphere.

He described Nigeria as a “organised crime scene” warning that agelong traditional of brazen theft of the country’s resources is certain to produce unimaginable resistance, at one point, from Nigerians.

He said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu inherited a mess urging him to create a “paradigm shift” from the ugly past.

Dangote told the House of Rep Committee “Some of the NNPC traders have opened blending plants somewhere off Malta. We all know these areas and we know what they are doing” Dangote said.

Addressing the drop of his diesel price, Dangote explained that the reason was never because he produces bad quality insinuating that the diesel produced locally at 650 per million (ppm) and 700 ppm is of better quality than imported fuel.

“Another complaint that I heard which I think the Rt. Hon Deputy Speaker raised with me asking why we dropped the price of diesel when we started. Is it due to the bad quality we are producing? I said No.

“Even at 650ppm to 700ppm was a better quality than what was imported and I am sure your excellency sir, most of you have problems with your vehicles due to the bad quality of fuel that we are importing into the country,” Dangote stated.

According to him “I still stand by what I said. Go to the filling stations, you can pick up and check the quality which is the only way.”

Dangote urged the House of Representatives members to set up an independent committee to verify the quality of petrol available at filling stations.

He “I want you to set up a committee that will come with every representative headed by your chosen honourable members to come and lead in taking samples from filling stations because I must tell you today that all the test certificates that people are busy floating around, where are the labs? Even if they have the labs, I can tell you they are fake certificates,” he said.

He said “the real one that you now know that they are right is to take from the filling station and also come and take from our production line. Now, you will be able to tell Nigerians that this is it.”

He promised to forge ahead to reveal more on why some NNPC officials established blending plants outside Nigeria.

“When we go ahead, we will say more in the sense that why they blend these things. You know as I said, I have been fighting all my life. I am a very, very fearless person. I believe so much in God and I don’t fear anybody. They can do whatever they want, I am not scared and I will fight head on,” he stated.

The worse is that even as the rots are being revealed, it is uncertain action would be taken.

In June 2022, the House of Representative Ad Hoc Committee probing oil subsidy scam said 23 companies paid by NNPC could not be traced, they did not exist yet, they took a lot of money from the Government to import fuel. The oil subsidy regime is said to have ended, but the ugly trend continues to the detriment of the long suffering people of Nigeria.